Two Quotes On Our Iraq Withdrawal

One frustrated,one abysmally stupid.

First, the frustration, from General John Keane, who was key in persuading President Bush to implement the urge strategy:

“I think it’s an absolute disaster,” said Gen. Keane, who advised Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was top Iraq commander. “We won the war in Iraq, and we’re now losing the peace.”

“Forty-four hundred lives lost,” Gen. Keane said. “Tens of thousands of troops wounded. Over a couple hundred thousand Iraqis killed. We liberated 25 million people. There is only one Arab Muslim country that elects its own government, and that is Iraq.

“We should be staying there to strengthen that democracy, to let them get the kind of political gains they need to get and keep the Iranians away from strangling that country. That should be our objective, and we are walking away from that objective.”

Sorry, General Keane. It is a disaster, but that mistake was set in stone when the Bush Administration decided to rush Iraq into elections with the idea of massaging his fetish of 'Arab Democracy' and empowered Shi'ite politicians with close ties to Iran instead of putting an interim pro-US government in power. Once that happened, the rest was predictable and just a matter of time.

And now the stupidity, from the same article:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday warned Iran not to miscalculate the U.S. decision to withdraw its troops.

“No one, most particularly Iran, should miscalculate about our continuing commitment to and with the Iraqis going forward,” she said in an interview with CNN from Uzbekistan.

“In addition to a very significant diplomatic presence in Iraq which will carry much of the responsibility for dealing with an independent, sovereign, democratic Iraq, we have bases in neighboring countries, we have our ally in Turkey. We have a lot of presence in that region,” she added.

As if Iran hasn't simply laughed at such pronouncements before? As if Erdogan's Islamist Turkey didn't sabotage our invasion of Iraq in 2003 and hasn't been a conduit for Iran evading the so-called sanctions since then? As if 150 troops guarding an embassy is going to stave off Moqtada al-Sadr and his Iranian armed and trained Shi'ite militia from Lebanonizing Iraq? As if the Iraqis themselves aren't booting us out in response to pressure from Iran?

Unbelievable. And there are people that still want this clueless woman as president.

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